A Beautiful Somewhere
by Painted Sky
Summary: [ It was a painting of Sunset Hill at dusk, and the main focus of the painting seemed to be a boy lying in the grass, contentedly asleep. Even in the picture, he didn't seem aware of Olette as she painted, but she liked it that way. ] [ implied roxette ]


**A/N: And out comes another oneshot. No joke. I seriously need to get my ass in gear and work on Yours Truly or Pray for Rain, but maybe once I finish this oneshot, I'll feel like it…**

_"I can tell that you don't know me anymore,  
It's easy to forget, sometimes we just forget.  
And being on this road is anything but sure.  
Maybe we'll forget, I hope we don't forget. _

I'm falling into memories of you and things we used to do.  
Follow me there,  
A beautiful somewhere,  
A place that I can share with you." 

**-Yellowcard 'One Year, Six Months'**

**A Beautiful Somewhere:**

Olette sighed, taking a moment to breathe in all those familiar smells, the ones she had missed for an entire year.

But she took a moment to remind herself that she was older now, she had moved out of her parent's house, and that this attachment to it was completely unhealthy. At least, unhealthy for the average responsible college student. But as she sat down on her bed and closed her eyes, she could almost believe that she was fourteen again, enjoying the freedom that the teenage years had bestowed upon her. But she was older now, and she had painfully discovered that the giddy freedom of childhood was all at once replaced with endless responsibility, responsibility that she hadn't quite been ready for. And med school had proven even more demanding than she could have even imagined, but obviously she felt passionately enough about helping the world that she kept with it.

Just like she always did.

But as she sighed once more, feeling waves of memories rushing over her, she realized that in truth, she had always been that way. She had always taken on the responsibility of watching over Hayer and Pence, and the thought of her two best friends made her let out her breath in something that resembled a chuckle. She would have to get a hold of them later, see if they were in the area. Maybe they could go out and relive the memories together, just have one night to pretend that things were just like they used to be.

And she still associated that strange feeling with her friends, one that she could only label as _maternal_. Some high school girls became friends with guys for—ulterior motives, but Olette was completely different. As one might take in two rowdy puppies wandering the streets, Olette took Hayner and Pence under her feminine, maternal wing—looked out for them and attempted to keep them in line, well, most of the time. She smiled as she remembered countless occurrences of "Oh, Olette, we won't get caught," and the slightly less common, "Oh, Olette, it'll be fine." But even when it wasn't, she couldn't deny that she enjoyed every minute she spent with her friends. The minutes she enjoyed far, far less, though, were the few and far between attempts to socialize with girls her own age.

She recalled a particular instance in the sixth grade. Upon the entrance to middle school, she had been plainly informed by her classmates that it was _not _okay to hang out with guys if you weren't dating them. And since that idea carried its own level of absurdity, she set out in search of a friend that was a girl, no matter how bizarre that seemed. So she chose to attempt to worm her way into a group of girls that were in a few of her classes, abandoning her friends to sit with these girls at lunch, deeply offending Hayer, Pence and—her—her other friends.

While the girls seemed slightly interested in her at first, scrutinizing her and deciding she passed, Olette was soon horrified to find that all these girls seemed to talk about were boys, clothes and hair. As you can imagine, this frustrated her to an extent she had never known before. While these girls discussed the best way to braid thin hair, Olette put her head in her hands and suppressed the urge to bring up something _interesting, _for God's sake, like Struggle or running races or shoplifting. The moment a few of the girls began swooning and fangirling over Seifer, Olette decided it was time to go. She simply picked up her lunch tray and walked away to join the guys, and the next day her spot at the girls' table had been filled. Every time she glanced over, she had the urge to shout to the poor unsuspecting new girl, "Don't do it! They'll poison your mind!", but she never did. The guys smugly forgave her for temporarily leaving their ranks, but still brought it up every now and then when she was in a bad mood, (but still, they never seemed to figure out that it only made the situation worse, but she forgave them as well, because they're guys. What're they supposed to understand anyway?)

Then, in eighth grade year, Olette realized that the only girl who might remotely understand her was Fuu. This, in itself, was a startling realization. She had never quite put two and two together, but when she stopped and thought about it, Fuu looked after Seifer and Rai in a way that could also only be described as maternal (except with more one-word insults to their intelligence, most of which they didn't understand anyway). She hung out with them and rolled her eyes when it was appropriate, but for the most part, she tried to keep them from doing anything _too_ entirely stupid. (Shortly following this realization was an attempt to get friendly with Fuu herself, but that idea was shot down so quickly that it was barely worth mentioning).

Olette frowned suddenly. Following her memories of eighth grade year was a vague and distant memory that was impossible to locate, but it troubled her more than anything she could think of. What had happened before freshman year that seemed as though it had changed her life? Putting her hand to her heart, her mind spinning, she almost felt light headed. This was the girl who could sit and watch a brain surgery without flinching once, but she thought she was going to pass out at the memory of something that happened freshman year? She sat in silence, trying to calm herself down, when she resolved to digging through the abyss she once called her closet.

As soon as she opened the closet door, she calmed down considerably. Along with a wave of year-old dust, she breathed in plenty of familiar smells that almost made her relive her whole childhood all over again. As she examined the floor of her closet, she laid eyes on her favorite orange shirt, the one with the white flowers. She smiled, remembering all the good memories that she associated with that shirt. And it was just lying there innocently, as if it had only been discarded yesterday, only feet away from her wicker laundry basket. As Olette brought her gaze upward, she found something she had almost forgotten about—her old oaken easel. As much as she was academically inclined, she enjoyed painting almost more than anything in the world, from water colors to acrylic paints to inks, she loved putting a brush to canvas and creating art. There was just something about taking something so blank and barren and turning it into a masterpiece that sent a rush through her veins like nothing else did.

Searching with a purpose now, she dug through her closet with new vigor, wanting to recover an old painting, a testament to her perfect childhood. Seeing the top of a canvas painted yellow, she moved the books out of the way and carefully extracted the painting, stepping out of the closet to examine it in the light. Immediately she remembered it. It was a painting of Sunset Hill at dusk, and the main focus of the painting seemed to be a boy lying in the grass, contentedly asleep. Even in the picture, his golden hair seemed to shine, however askew, and as he slept he didn't seem aware of the girl painting him. He seemed so familiar, like a friend forgotten.

Before she knew it or realized what was going on, Olette had hot tears running down her face. The longer she stared at that boy, the more her heart ached uncontrollably, pained like she had never been before, and she bit her lip to keep from crying out. It felt so wrong, not to know why she felt this way. She pulled the easel out of the closet and set the painting on it, and it seemed to conjure a memory just out of her reach. As her left hand seemed to grab the paintbrush of memory, she realized what she needed to do.

She pulled out her cell phone and dialed Hayner's number. He picked up after three rings. "Olette? How are you? Are you in town?"

She sucked in a breath. "I'm at my parent's house. Hayner—something's wrong." She could imagine him furrowing his brow and narrowing his brown eyes, exactly what he always did when he thought, as if he was angry that a single thought had eluded him.

"What?" He asked, as if unsure of what else to do in this particular situation.

"It—It was always just you, me and Pence, right? There wasn't someone else—"

"You mean Roxas?" At the name, she gasped. The boy with the golden hair—was that Roxas? It had to be. She was sure.

"I never—why—did he—what happened? Why don't I remember him?" But even as she spoke the last words, she began to remember, slowly but surely. Eventually she remembered—the way he looked, the way he talked, the way he said her name.

Hayner sighed, not something that happened often. "I'll—I'll just meet you at your parent's house. I'll bring Pence too."

"Aren't you at work?" Olette asked, biting her lip and suppressing the urge to continue crying.

"No need to worry yourself over trivial matters like that, 'letty." And he hung up.

Well, it was a comfort that Hayner hadn't changed that much.

"Damn, Olette." As expected, Hayner and Pence entered her room without even knocking, but the former was terribly heavy-footed and she had heard him coming up the steps. "I didn't think it was possible for you to get any prettier."

Olette turned to face her visitors as she smiled slightly, closed her eyes and shook her head at the blonde boy. His mindless flirting was just a part of his personality, and she had come to accept it over time. He was haughty and arrogant but along with Pence (and Roxas, maybe, too?) felt the need to protect her from any other guy that gave her so much as a second look. She had never even devoted a thought to assuming that it was because he thought of her as more than a friend, her feelings for the two (three?) had always been clear.

"How much have you remembered?" Pence asked, always the one to skip straight to the point in times like these.

"Not much." Olette answered honestly.

"Is that the painting?" Hayner asked, pointing to the one sitting on the easel and wandering slowly in that direction. He reached out, almost as if to touch the oil on canvas, but thought better of it and let his hand drop back to his side. Olette nodded. "Wow, it's amazing." She knew that wasn't his mindless flirting; she could recognize Hayner's pure and honest compliments when they came around. He turned back around to face her. "Why did you never show us this?"

She felt her face flush. "Well, that's one of the few things I have figured out. I think this painting meant a lot to me, though I'm not quite sure why."

Hayner sighed. "That's—that's what I thought." He sat down beside her on the edge of the bed facing the painting, and Pence followed suit, sitting down on her other side. "We—we grew up with Roxas." That name—the sound of that name sent something rushing through her veins. "He was born here, he went to school here, just like us. He was part of our group, he hung out in the hangout in the back alleyway, he marveled over your paintings and intelligence just like the rest of us."

"If not more." Pence added softly, as if addressing something that Hayner didn't want to.

"If not more." Hayner added admittedly. She peered at him, almost in disbelief. "Yes, he was just as much a friend to you as we were, and are." After receiving a glance from Pence, he added, "If not more."

"But then—that summer before freshman year—" Pence began, but didn't seem to want to finish and looked over at Hayner uneasily.

"—he disappeared. Vanished, gone without a trace. Just out of the blue one day. No one could find him, or even any clues as to what happened." He looked down slightly, no longer making eye contact with her. Probably because she was crying, she reasoned. And Hayner was never really good at dealing with emotional people. "It hit you harder than it hit any of us. You two were always close, and then he disappeared without warning. It was a little too much for you to handle, and for a while—" He seemed to struggle with the concept, but received no help from Pence, "—for a while we weren't sure you were going to make it."

"Not going to make it?" She asked uneasily, although she knew exactly what he meant. She bit her lip, struggling to understand all of this. Or any of this, really. Hayner nodded.

"You couldn't eat, you would lie awake and never sleep, your grades slipped, but when you stopped painting we knew we had to do something, or we would lose you completely. Your parents sent you to therapy, and all of a sudden you seemed to get better, almost to fast and too perfect to be true. But you seemed to forget about him, and things started to be right again." He was looking back up at her now, despite being obviously uncomfortable telling her this, "And at that point in time, that was all that mattered. We just wanted you to be safe." He paused, "And then a few years later, we found out why. You were given drugs to help your depression, but that meant forgetting about him completely. In essence, it would totally block the memory of him. We weren't allowed to mention him around you, and you continued happily along, even though we hated it. It—just wasn't right."

Olette looked up at the painting once more, and realized that no matter how radical, she believed every word Hayner said. Every memory registered properly in her mind, building bridges that connected the few memories she had recovered on her own. But there was one thing she needed to know.

"How—how close were we?" She felt her face flush once more. As the words left her mouth, she suddenly thought of all the better ways she could have phrased that question. Damn.

Hayner sighed. "I—I really don't know. But I had my suspicions. After all, you both had a thing for watching dusk on Sunset Hill." He gestured to the painting.

"You—were closer to Roxas than you had ever been to us. That's probably why it hurt you so bad when he disappeared." Pence said, flipping his raven-black hair back slightly. "As far as—romance, I really can't say I knew either. But I think you do."

With a slight twitch of her right eye, Olette realized that Pence was right. She was only looking for reassurance. She really did know, somewhere inside, what she felt for him was true, and that painting proved it. There was a long silence, but it wasn't awkward in the least, and she sighed softly once before asking,

"Do you think he'll be back someday?" She asked without looking at either of them, not pressuring the two for an answer.

"Of course he will." Pence said.

"Oh, who wouldn't come back for the three of us?" Hayner said, the same devilish smirk on his face as he put his arm around her shoulder. Smirking likewise, Olette followed suit and put her arm around Pence.

"I can't even imagine, Hayner."


End file.
